Wing Scars
by SweetestDisarray
Summary: A boy appears in the middle of a busy New York side walk, standing motionless in the crowd. Witnesses will swear he appeared from the air. Both of his shoulder blades are fractured, but he doesn't know why. He doesn't know where he lives. He doesn't know his own name. All he has is a face in his head, and an unwavering determination to find it. (Klaine as angels AU)


Hello everyone! Welcome to my new Klaine story! This is a story that has been bouncing around my head in various versions for ten years, so it's exciting to feel like it's time to bring it out into the light, and I finally have the right people to tell the story with. That being said, this is a bit of an unusual plot, and the prologue is a departure from my usual style (that will return with the regular chapters). I'm just throwing the prologue out to see if it sticks, so please give me your honest feedback. As always, love to you all! (I wrote this chapter while listening to Lorde's cover of 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World'. It's so beautifully dark and gritty, and I love it.)

**Wing Scars**

Prologue

_It is the finding of the High Council that Blaine Anderson, of the warrior caste, is guilty of murder._

Angels aren't immune to cruelty or jealousy.

Blaine learns this the hard way when he's accepted into the warrior caste at age twelve. The boy two years older than him, who is allocated to the messenger caste, taunts Blaine until he is lured to a secluded area and uses his fledgling abilities to lock clumsily constructed bonds around Blaine's limbs, pinning him to the spot. It doesn't take particularly long for an adult to find him, but the clumsiness of the bonds mean they've almost fused to his skin, invisible bands that are a manifestation of the boy's power and intent, so it takes hours of careful mental dissection to free him safely.

By the time he's freed, Blaine is seething with a resentment that follows him for weeks. He doesn't even understand why being allocated to the messenger caste is so bad; the general consensus is that the warrior caste is the most prestigious, and Blaine will wear that with pride, but to be a messenger means you are looked at with complete awe and adoration. Even if it is from a human, Blaine doesn't think there can be a much better feeling.

_The High Council accepts all witness accounts that Blaine Anderson was present at weapons training for the twelfth sunrise in this cycle. We furthermore accept testimony that he had an altercation with a fellow warrior that was not initiated by Blaine, and, in poor control of his anger, raised his spear and sheathed the spearhead with willfire._

Angels aren't immune to fear.

When Blaine is fourteen he is considered old enough to be removed from his clan and put in a dormitory. From birth, angels are raised in clans – groups of five or six children who are homed together with a rotating shift of four adults from the nurturing caste. They had been Blaine's parents and siblings, in human concepts, as much as they could be – the people who had taught him or learned beside him his entire life, for better or worse, and who had shared his clan name. But after two years of training with the warrior caste, "clinging" to his childhood clan was considered weak and distasteful.

He cries his first night in the dormitory, cringing away from all the smooth-silver walls and towering boys and girls who sneer at Blaine for his late separation. If someone were to trap him now there would be no clan leaders to urgently seek him out and soothe him afterwards. As one of sixty students, he would be barely missed. His commanders might even expect him to break the imprisoning bonds himself.

The girls, ultimately, are the worst – that night they coo at him in sickening, sarcastic tones, faces too close to his with a saccharine sympathy and sneering laughter. Lying under each condescending taunt was a silent threat of what would happen if he retaliated. So Blaine shivered and sniffled, and when, from across the room, he caught blue eyes set in a pale, elfin face, he turned away. And as the sun rose, and the girls began to shift, he swore that he would take this fear and turn it into the same resentment and anger that had fuelled the last two years of his education. He would not be taunted again.

_The High Council, after deliberation, accepts that Blaine Anderson did not wilfully intend to harm any fellow angel and instead intended to cause destruction of property as a demonstration of emotion. We accept his testimony that, as anger was clouding his judgement, he threw his spear without planning a target. We believe that he truly feels deep remorse for his actions._

Angels aren't immune to pride and anger.

So one day, when Blaine is twenty, days from graduating from his warrior training, and taunted one last time –

He snaps.

Eight years of resentment, of fear, of anger – every time he had been trapped or taunted and never been allowed to find release – are imbued into the head of a spear. And as he screams at the nameless, faceless angel who taunted him, the bully closes in, gets closer, and shouts back. Blaine grasps the shaft of the spear tighter, hands shaking, and all the bully does is push him once, and Blaine _throws_.

He half-spins with the force of his throw, letting the spear loose with all the strength eight years of training had given him and none of the precision. He watches the spearhead glowing with the willfire he had poured into it, hurtling through the air.

He watches it lodge itself directly through the chest of a boy with blue eyes and an elfin face. And there are no words of horror that can describe the place the world becomes in the second that the spearhead, the metal too weak to withstand the force of Blaine's willfire, explodes.

_We find, however, that such additional context in no way mitigate the alleged crimes that took place on that morning. As a warrior, Blaine Anderson was trained to act in separation from his emotions and to use violence as a tool in only the most dire of circumstances._

_It is therefore the unanimous ruling of the High Council that Blaine Anderson is guilty of the murder of the angel known as Cassian, now Fallen as the human Kurt Hummel. Sentencing shall be delivered in three sunrises._

On the fourth sunrise after his verdict, Blaine kisses his palm and reaches out to his clan leaders, then raises his face to the sky. Behind him, the High Council, their hands joined, begin to shimmer as their combined will bleeds into the air. Blaine closes his eyes, and by the time his lashes brush his cheek, he is gone.

_Bound. Fallen. Condemned. You must understand him. __**Find him.**_

On the corner of Broadway and Washington Place, a young man appears. The middle-aged woman who smacks into his chest will swear for the rest of her life that he appeared from thin air, whereas the man behind him will blame the fact that he was looking at his phone for not seeing the boy.

He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. The only sound he makes is to whimper loudly when someone pats his shoulder. He has no belongings – no phone, no ID, not even a medical alert bracelet – except the simple clothes he wears. As increasingly frantic questions go unanswered, and tears form at the corners of his eyes, someone calls an ambulance. A small crowd gathering around him begins to mutter, swapping information backwards and forwards, almost everyone eventually agreeing, "_He really did just appear out of nowhere, I saw it._"

The ambulance pulls up to the crowded kerb, police car in tow, and the police officer swiftly approaches the young man, trying to get his attention. When he receives no more response than the crowd – save a much louder cry than before, as a work-hewn hand roughly grabs his shoulder – the police officer merely pats the boy down and shrugs at the paramedics lingering by their vehicle.

As the paramedics begin to close in on the man, the crowd clears a circle and hazel eyes meet skyscraper and sky. But none of these images register. There is only one thing in his head, so overwhelming that it drowns out the pain in his shoulders and the people around him. Filling everything is the face of a boy, and the words _find him_.


End file.
